Great news! Petrol prices are way down, dirt cheap, 50 cents a litre in some places, due to geo-politics and the coronavirus, which is an unexpected positive. Now to go on a long road trip. Wait, we are imprisoned in our homes under self-arrest. So, it is all for nothing. At least I can fill up the tank of the old Holden, one, and hope that no roaming gangs milk my tank. No, petrol is too cheap. 
  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8175715/Sydney-service-station-lowers-petrol-price-50-CENTS-litre.html?ito=push-notification&ci=12026&si=1326534

     And speaking of homes, house prices are a-crashing.
  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8174539/Australian-house-prices-tipped-plunge-40-cent-coronavirus-hits-economy.html?ito=push-notification&ci=12014&si=1326534

     Independent senator Jacqui Lambie has called for a virtual Parliament to maintain oversight as the government looks to pass its $130 billion JobKeeper package on Wednesday. "You can't tell me in the 21st century that cannot be done," the Tasmanian senator told Fran Kelly on Radio National this morning. The Parliament practicing social distancing on Monday March 23. One third of Parliament will return to Canberra on Wednesday to pass the JobKeeper scheme, some being flown in on RAAF aircraft. Attorney-General and leader of the House of Representatives Christian Porter has said he would recall Parliament as needed while the pandemic raged on. However, the decision to dismiss Parliament in the first place has been criticised. Labor leader Anthony Albanese has said he disagrees with the decision, particularly given other parliaments across the world are continuing to sit. "We're a democracy. And in a democracy, you don't suspend it," he told News Breakfast. "It wasn't suspended during the Spanish flu, or World War I or World War II." Also speaking on News Breakfast this morning, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said there were "logistical" issues with Parliament continuing to sit, notably state border closures. "We do have an exemption in order to be able to get here, but we shouldn't really be stretching that beyond what is necessary," he said. "Because in the end, we're asking everybody to stay at home and to stop, sort of, moving around the countryside. We should really, as members of Parliament, try to stick to that as best we can, and keep our movements, our own movements, to a minimum as well." with Mary Ward

     Everyone is practicing social distancing, the new “safe sex” of our age, for those who remember what things were like in the AIDS panic back in the 1980s. But, social distancing must be done, if not yet at the point of a bayonet, then at least for now, at the point of an on-the-spot-fine. That being so, is the present distance enough? Should it be over four times as much? Certainly, a light year, the distance light travels in a year, would do the trick, in principle, but, hey, this is a pandemic, and there is no room here for light-heartedness, pun intended.
  https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/health-news/is-6-feet-enough-for-social-distancing-an-mit-researcher-says-droplets-carrying-coronavirus-can-travel-up-to-27-feet/ar-BB11Ww71
  https://www.nature.com/news/polopoly_fs/1.19996!/menu/main/topColumns/topLeftColumn/pdf/534024a.pdf?origin=ppub
  https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2763852

“Lydia Bourouiba, an associate professor at MIT, has researched the dynamics of exhalations (coughs and sneezes, for instance) for years at The Fluid Dynamics of Disease Transmission Laboratory and found exhalations cause gaseous clouds that can travel up to 27 feet. Her research could have implications for the global COVID-19 pandemic, though measures called for by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization call for six and three feet of space, respectively.  “There’s an urgency in revising the guidelines currently being given by the WHO and the CDC on the needs for protective equipment, particularly for the frontline health care workers,” Bourouiba told USA TODAY. Bourouiba’s research calls for better measures to protect health care workers and, potentially, more distance from infected people who are coughing or sneezing. She said current guidelines are based on “large droplets” as the method of transmission for the virus and the idea that those large droplets can only go a certain distance. In a Journal of the American Medical Association article published last week, Bourouiba said peak exhalation speeds can reach 33 to 100 feet per second and "currently used surgical and N95 masks are not tested for these potential characteristics of respiratory emissions." The idea that droplets "hit a virtual wall and stop there and after that we are safe," is not based on evidence found in her research, Bourouiba said, and also not based on "evidence that we have about COVID transmission."

     The Federal Government has set up a Royal Commission, originally about Bushfires, but now mainly about getting more power to the federal government. Here is the link to info on the enquiry:
  https://naturaldisaster.royalcommission.gov.au/

     The Saltbush Club has made a submission entitled:

     How far can anarcho-tyranny go? On the spot fines are nothing when the state can simply shoot you, on the spot!
  https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/dead-duterte-warns-violating-lockdown-200401164531160.html

“Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has warned he would order the country's police and military to shoot dead anyone "who creates trouble" during a month-long lockdown of the island of Luzon enforced to halt the spread of the coronavirus. "Let this be a warning to all. Follow the government at this time because it is critical that we have order," he said in a late-night televised national address on Wednesday. "And do not harm the health workers, the doctors ... because that is a serious crime. My orders to the police and the military, if anyone creates trouble, and their lives are in danger: shoot them dead." "Do not intimidate the government. Do not challenge the government. You will lose," he added in Filipino and English. Duterte's warning came after residents of a slum in Manila's Quezon City staged a protest along a highway near their shanty houses, claiming they had not received any food packs and other relief supplies since the lockdown began more than two weeks ago. Village security officers and police urged the residents to go back to their homes, but they refused, a police report said. Police broke up the protest and arrested 20 people, the report added.”

     It is the same kind of reasoning employed in a whole range of policies in the modern liberal state; something causes a problem, so ban it. Take firearms for example. The same causal principle lies behind the present social distancing measures: locate the cause, then ban it. And, in many cases that makes sense. But now consider this:
  https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-covid-19-breathing-talking-enough-spread-airborne

“The coronavirus that causes COVID-19 may spread through the air in tiny particles that infected people exhale during normal breathing and speech. Until now, experts have said that the virus, called SARS-CoV-2, doesn’t spread through the air in that way, but rather through relatively large droplets released when people cough or sneeze. Those droplets can contaminate surfaces or objects and infect people who touch the surface and then touch their faces. Large droplets are still a means of infection, but researchers now say that tiny airborne particles may also carry infectious virus. “Currently available research supports the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 could be spread via bioaerosols generated directly by patients’ exhalation,” researchers from the U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine wrote in an April 1 report to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. If the coronavirus is airborne, that could help explain why it is so contagious, and can spread before people have symptoms (SN: 3/13/20). As of April 2, more than 1 million people worldwide are confirmed to have COVID-19, with nearly a quarter of those cases in the United States, according to tracking by Johns Hopkins University. More than 50,000 people have died worldwide, including more than 5,600 people in the United States. Wearing surgical masks can cut down on the amount of virus that infected people spread, the expert panel says, citing an unpublished study from the University of Hong Kong. The letter does not address whether wearing a mask will protect the person wearing the mask from catching the illness (SN: 3/27/20). How much virus a person must breathe in to get infected isn’t known. The report also notes that genetic material from the virus was detected more than two meters (six feet) away from patients’ hospital beds. That finding could indicate that physical distancing by at least two meters may not be enough to limit spread of the virus. Whether infectious virus could be carried that far or if the genetic material is from dead viruses isn’t yet known.”

     I was in my friendly neighbourhood supermarket, where a guy older than me, probably from WWII, lost it, being upset by regulations. “Why did I fight for this country?” he lamented, not being able to get all of his goods, and having to pack stuff, and numerous other pointless things. I said to him that it was not the staff’s fault that this was happening and that we little people are all victims. And, down the track supermarkets will probably close, so people will face mass starvation. Maybe before then we will not be even able to pay for food:
  https://au.finance.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/supermarket-price-rises-003401768.html

“Shoppers have accused Coles and Woolworths of “price gouging” even as supermarket shelves are being emptied by shoppers panic-buying amid fears of a looming shutdown and tens of thousands of job losses. Disgruntled shoppers on the hunt for supermarket essentials took to social media in order to air their frustrations about high prices and missing specials. “Why are there no specials in your stores at the moment - normally aisles are full of special offers but nothing- is this not price gouging while people are struggling with making ends meet?” posted one user about Coles. Another posted a photo of broccoli advertised for $11.50 per kilo. Broccoli is typically priced around $5 per kilo. Some users said they paid $5 for half a head of cauliflower, and others said they saw lettuce going for up to $8 a head. Another also said Coles’ prices were not only high, but stock was low, and asked what supermarkets were doing to help the country. The lack of specials did not go unnoticed by shoppers, with one saying there was “not one special on the shelves” and accused Woolworths of “profiteering”. A spokesperson for Woolworths said that there were multiple factors behind the price rise of produce, such as the drought and bushfire seasons impacting supply. “Due to pressures throughout the horticultural supply chain caused by drought, unseasonal weather and an unprecedented spike in demand, we're currently seeing an impact on the availability of some fresh fruit and vegetable lines,” the spokesperson said. “This has led to higher wholesale costs for some fruit and vegetable lines across the market and we're working closely with our growers to help manage this as best we can. “We understand the uncertainty facing households right now and remain focused on offering quality Australian grown food to our customers at competitive prices.” A Coles spokesperson told Yahoo Finance that the drought had hit Australian producers hard. “We are seeing upward price pressures across many agricultural categories as a result of the sustained drought across many of our producing regions. “In the case of produce, much of what our hard-working supplier partners are harvesting now was planted during tough drought conditions,” the spokesperson said. This is particularly true of vegetables such as leafy greens, broccoli, beans and corn. Meanwhile, “extreme hot weather” during Christmas and January saw the volume of tomatoes, capsicums and cucumbers impacted. “Our suppliers are enjoying more favourable growing conditions over recent weeks and we are confident that vegetable volumes will improve.”

     Things have changed, for the absolute worst, and it is likely that the surveillance state will be forever, since the psychopathic global elites who rule our local elites, whatever the merits of all the present restrictions, are not likely to want to give up power. It will be just a depicted in the film version of The Lord of the Rings, where all of the bad guys wanted the ring of power, a symbol, of, naturally, power. His guy would know:
  https://thenextweb.com/neural/2020/03/25/snowden-warns-the-surveillance-states-were-creating-now-will-outlast-the-coronavirus/

“Governments around the world are using high-tech surveillance measures to combat the coronavirus outbreak. But are they worth it? Edward Snowden doesn’t think so. The former CIA contractor, whose leaks exposed the scale of spying programs in the US, warns that once this tech is taken out of the box, it will be hard to put it back. “When we see emergency measures passed, particularly today, they tend to be sticky,” Snowden said in an interview with the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival. The emergency tends to be expanded. Then the authorities become comfortable with some new power. They start to like it. Supporters of the draconian measures argue that normal rules are not enough during a pandemic and that the long-term risks can be addressed once the outbreak is contained. But a brief suspension of civil liberties can quickly be extended. Security services will soon find new uses for the tech. And when the crisis passes, governments can impose new laws that make the emergency rules permanent and exploit them to crack down on dissent and political opposition. Take the proposals to monitor the outbreak by tracking mobile phone location data. This could prove a powerful method of tracing the spread of the virus and the movements of people who have it. But it will also be a tempting tool to track terrorists — or any other potential enemies of the states.

     It was not an April Fool’s joke: there is a countercultural belief that 5 G technology has caused the coronavirus pandemic. While it is true that there is an on-going debate about the effects of 5 G on human health, there is no evidence that 5 G has the same effects as seen by the coronavirus, although, if 5 G does impact upon human health, this will be one further factor lowering human immunity and health, this having an indirect impact.     Anyway, some people are going over the top on this, literally burning down towers.
  https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/11311306/bizarre-5g-coronavirus-conspiracy-theory-whatsapp/ 
  https://www.rt.com/sport/484967-coronavirus-5g-amir-khan/
  https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11320198/coronavirus-5g-conspiracy-theory-masts/

“Conspiracy nuts are reportedly setting phone masts alight and targeting engineers after a bizarre claim 5G "radiation" caused the deadly coronavirus spread. The theory originated last month after a video filmed at a US health conference claimed Africa was not as affected by the disease because it is "not a 5G region". The myth was quickly debunked after the World Health Organisation confirmed there were thousands of Covid-19 cases in Africa. The government has also confirmed there is "no evidence to suggest that 5G has anything to do with Covid-19". Celebs have been slammed for sharing the conspiracy theory, including Jason Gardiner and Callum Best, who posted similar claims that 5G can impact the immune system. But the claims have still been doing the rounds on WhatsApp via a lengthy voice note - with phone masts now being set alight in the UK. Engineers are now also being targeted with social media users encouraging each other to destroy the masts in a Stop 5G Facebook group.

     With all of this free communist welfare money being splashed around like there is no tomorrow, where will this lead? Why the collapse of the welfare state, naturally, with Finland being one of the early cabs off the ranks:
  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-02/finland-is-told-its-welfare-state-can-t-cope-with-virus-fallout

“One of the world’s best-funded welfare states is starting to crack as the fallout of the coronavirus triggers mass unemployment. Finland’s system of jobless benefits can’t cope with the sudden surge in demand, the country’s biggest unemployment fund, YTK, said. There are more than 300,000 Finns who suddenly find themselves without work, either through temporary layoffs or outright job cuts. A large chunk of them may have to wait until next year to get their first benefit payment, YTK said. Money’s not the problem, Managing Director Sanna Alamaki said in letters to members sent through April 1. It’s “that the benefit applications can’t be processed and, consequently, money can’t be paid out quickly enough,” she said. YTK is expecting “a flood” of more than 100,000 applications through April. That’s double the number it would process during an average year. Even if it triples staff, people would still face a three-month wait for their jobless benefit, YTK said. That exceeds the legal limit of 30 days. Finns, along with their Nordic neighbors, rely on a generous welfare system to ensure that those who drop off payrolls still get some form of monthly support. When that safety net starts to crack, it risks upending the social model that underpins the high levels of trust in government typical to the Nordics. The fund, which represents 20% of wage earners in Finland, called on the government to help, and asked that it provide subsidies to companies laying off workers so that they still get paid through the payroll. In a letter to members, the fund said more than 270,000 members are at risk of losing their jobs. That compares with the 187,000 people who were unemployed in February, according to official statistics.”

     None of this is in Australia yet, and hopefully we will never get to this level, not merely of simply shooting those who do not do what the state dictates, but the abandonment of fundamental legal protections, such as trial by jury, as has been done in Scotland:
  https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/ill-send-you-to-the-grave-duterte-orders-police-military-to-shoot-covid-19-quarantine-violators/    
  https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/31/scotlands-sinister-covid19-response-suspend-trial-by-jury/

“The new legal powers sought by Scotland’s devolved law-makers undermine ideas of justice in place for hundreds of years, according to the Scottish Criminal Bar Association. The new Coronavirus (Scotland) Bill grants sweeping powers to Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Parliament, and makes dramatic changes to the criminal justice system. Among a long list of changes, the Bill seeks to:

     This is quoted from Rite-On as at March 19,  2020, and   no doubt there have been a  few increases since that date. Question:  where did the money come from?  Did they borrow from the World bank; the IMF or other Banks?  Which of these or any other sources had such amounts available?  Can anyone help? Or is it all going to be just put on the tab, of endless growing debt?  The economic impact as at 19 March 2020 in USD;

•    The United States, announced a $1 trillion economic package that will include $500 billion in direct payments to taxpayers. The U.S. is also planning $500 billion in loans for businesses. The Federal Reserve announced it will create an emergency lending facility to help the country’s short-term credit market.
•    Canada will spend an initial $18.6 billion in support to families and businesses affected by the outbreak. The country also pledged about $37 billion in tax deferrals to help Canadians and businesses survive the economic trouble.
•    The European Union said it would use up to $41 billion for measures to counteract the economic consequences of the coronavirus crisis. Meanwhile, the European Central Bank announced it will buy up to $830 billion government and corporate bonds and other assets in a bid to calm the continent’s financial markets.
•    In the United Kingdom, the government announced $398 billion for loans and guarantees. Smaller businesses will be granted access to cash grants of more than $28,000 to tackle the coronavirus pandemic.
•    German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that her country is facing the worst crisis since the end of World War II and said her government will do “whatever it takes” to keep its businesses afloat. The country pledged unlimited cash to businesses hit by the crisis.
•    In France, a country severely affected by the coronavirus outbreak, lawmakers pledged around $50 billion in immediate aid for businesses and employees hit by the pandemic which is expected to shrink the French gross domestic product by 1% in 2020.
•    In Austria, the government announced it will spend up to $42 billion to secure jobs and support businesses. The government will provide up to $10 billion in guarantees and warranties, more than $16 billion in emergency aid and more than $10 billion in tax deferrals.
•    Spain said it will support its economy with a 200 billion euro (about $219 billion) aid package. The country will pay benefits to workers temporarily laid off and will suspend mortgage payments for those affected by the crisis.
•    The Netherlands will provide up to $22 billion to businesses as part of an emergency package in an effort to help workers and lower the impact of the COVID-19 crisis.
•    Italy, the country most severely affected by the coronavirus pandemic in Europe so far, has adopted an emergency plan of $28 billion to support its economy. The measure is necessary in order to soften the blow taken by a society forced to shut down in a national quarantine.
•    Portugal will also spend $10 billion on an emergency package. About $5.6 billion will be used as fiscal stimulus, $3.2 billion for state-backed credit guarantees and about $1 billion for social security payments.
•    Norway will offer companies at least $9.7 billion in funding in order to guarantee loans and bond issues to support business and the economy. Also, payments of payroll taxes can be postponed.
•    While no specific measures have yet been announced for Ireland, the country pledged more than $3 billion earlier this month to fight against the health crisis and support sick pay and business affected by COVID-19.
•    Sweden also launched a coronavirus crisis package of more than $30 billion. The country is looking at paying for sick leave through the months of April and May and supporting the cost for temporary redundancies during the crisis.
•    Denmark also released $30 billion for banks to lend to businesses during the pandemic.
•    Australia’s government announced it is lowering interest rates while also injecting about $56 billion (this has since been increased)  into the economy, Reuters reported.
•    In Japan, the government passed a $10 billion package earlier in March for small and medium-sized businesses, as well as self-employed workers affected by the coronavirus. The government on Thursday formed a panel of ministers to examine a broader package to help the economy.

     Is there a link between the climate change agenda, and the coronavirus pandemic social controls? Here below an article gives one hint, with the globalist World Economic Forum claiming that there will be a flow-on effect from the social control measures that the public will be trained to put up with, translating into climate change action:
  https://www.technocracy.news/wef-confirms-link-between-pandemic-and-climate-change-agenda/

“While we are reeling in the shock of what is happening around us and coming to terms with our new reality, we could seize this moment as a unique window of opportunity to re-build our society and economy as we want it. With scientists warning we have 10 years left to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, this could offer an opportunity to fix the climate crisis before it's too late. A number of shifts brought on by the COVID-19 emergency lay the groundwork for the transformation required. Here are five actions we should take. We have known about the risk of a global pandemic for years: just see Bill Gates declare during a 2015 Ted Talk that “If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it is most likely to be a highly infectious virus… We should be concerned. But in fact we can build a really good response system.” Yet it took an unfolding disaster to prompt governments, businesses and individuals to act at the scale required. Climate change similarly poses a major threat to human lives and urgently requires a comprehensive response. A study published in the medical journal the Lancet predicts 500,000 adult deaths caused by climate change by 2050. If the pandemic teaches us to acknowledge our vulnerability to high-impact shocks such as pandemics and climate-related disasters, we will be infinitely better placed to prepare for them.

     So, what is Turkey, a member of NATO doing during this time of crisis? How is it helping?? Why, by pushing possibly coronavirus infected people into Greece, because that is what demographic warfare is all about:
  https://gellerreport.com/2020/04/corona-jihad-turkey-sending-corona-infected-migrants-into-greece-accompanied-by-turkeys-coastguard-in-hazmat-suits.html/

“Several days ago, a boat from the Coast Guard found a boat full of migrants trying to reach a Greek island in the eastern Aegean. The ports prevented its entry into Greek territorial waters, resulting in the Turkish coastguard coming at some point to accompany, as is customary in such cases, the boat with migrants back to Asia Minor. When, however, the Turkish landing crew approached and saw the boat with the migrants, it turned 180 degrees and drove away at high speed. The Greek ports remained in the maritime area to prevent a new attempt to enter the boat into Greek territorial waters and to the surprise of their Turkish counterparts. Their question was resolved shortly after they saw another Turkish Coast Guard approaching and surprisingly found that its crew wore the well-known biological warfare uniforms in our day from the coronavirus. They then came to the realization that the first Turkish limb had been removed because it recognized how immigrants – identified by the Turkish authorities – were infected with the virus on board the boat. My case was told by a very credible source who, due to a high position, is able to know firsthand. It seems unbelievable, however, that the Turkish state has consciously orchestrated an informal biological warfare against Greece. Obviously, he expected that – as in the past – so in this case, if the boat had arrived on the Greek island, the immigrants would have been driven, even temporarily, to a hospitality center. Since then the measures for new entrants were still not as stringent as they are today, it is possible that the coronavirus was being “sponsored” by the Turkish state into the immigrant center. Fortunately, this informal attack was repelled, and the good news is that it has helped to tighten up the measures for migrants who manage to reach a Greek island.

     We are all speculating regarding the present coronavirus freak-out, about what comes next. What is the less-than-hidden agenda, which must be bad and New Wold Orderly. Bill at the Gates may be able to help us here:
  https://off-guardian.org/2020/04/04/did-bill-gates-just-reveal-the-reason-behind-the-lock-downs/

“On March 24 Bill Gates gave a highly revelatory 50-minute interview (above) to Chris Anderson. Anderson is the Curator of TED, the non-profit that runs the TED Talks. Anderson asked Gates at 3:49 in the video of the interview – which is quickly climbing to three million views – about a ‘Perspective’ article by Gates that was published February 28 in the New England Journal of Medicine. “You wrote that this could be the once-in-a-century pandemic that people have been fearing. Is that how you think of it, still?” queried Anderson. “Well, it’s awful to say this but, we could have a respiratory virus whose case fatality rate was even higher. If this was something like smallpox, that kills 30 percent of people. So, this is horrific,” responded Gates. “But, in fact, most people even who get the COVID disease are able to survive. So. in that, it’s quite infectious – way more infectious than MERS [Middle East Respiratory Syndrome] or SARS [Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome] were. [But] it’s not as fatal as they were. And yet the disruption we’re seeing in order to knock it down is really completely unprecedented.” Gates reiterates the dire consequences for the global economy later in the interview. “We need a clear message about that,” Gates said starting at 26:52. “It is really tragic that the economic effects of this are very dramatic. I mean, nothing like this has ever happened to the economy in our lifetimes. But … bringing the economy back and doing [sic] money, that’s more of a reversible thing than bringing people back to life. So we’re going to take the pain in the economic dimension, huge pain, in order to minimize the pain in disease and death dimension.” Right after that, at 34:14, Gates talked about how he sees things rolling out from there. “Eventually what we’ll

     I remember my grandmother telling me about the Victory Gardens people had during World War I and II. Well, many people are turning back to that, but there is one problem: seeds:
  http://archive.vn/L9K6d

     I have heard that the hardware shops in Oz are restricting the sale of seeds. This does not surprise me, since this is already being done by the monopoly sellers in America, and whatever bad that happens there, always migrates here like … well a plague:
  https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-04-04-they-want-you-to-starve-walmart-blocks-garden-seeds.html

     We bring you only the freshest, politically incorrect news and ideas, in these crazy brave new world times. How about white slaves in New Zealand? No, not present-day white sexual slavery, as we see in Europe with open market white children rape paedophilic grooming gangs, allowed to flourish by the state, blessed at times by the local fuzz, but conventional slaves, in the dim dark past. Here is a mainstream media coverage of this:
  https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12241815

“While people are aware of the atrocities of the black slave trade around the world, few are familiar with the enslavement and trafficking of Europeans in 19th-century New Zealand. For Māori, the sailors, convicts, missionaries, traders, whalers and sawyers who were captured were viewed as the property of their chiefs and existed primarily to serve their masters. Trevor Bentley's new book, Pākehā Slaves, Māori Masters, details the slave trade in 1800s New Zealand which, as he puts it, was "not something that only white people did to black people". Children were also sometimes captured - often in retaliation against Pākehā doing the same, as the extract below details. Lawless sealing and whaling crews frequently kidnapped Māori women and girls and took them to sea as sex and labour slaves before abandoning them on Pacific Islands and at the Australian ports. As late as 1841, before sailing from Otago, the crew of the French whaleship Oriental carried off a Māori woman and child by night "for the captain's use". Māori, on the other hand, rarely kidnapped Pākehā settler women and girls from their homes during times of peace and war with Pākehā. One exception was Caroline Perrett. Following the kidnapping of a Māori child by Pākehā at Taranaki and destruction of Māori graves by her father at Lepperton in 1874, 8-year-old Caroline was kidnapped from her parent's farm by a band of dispossessed Māori seeking utu. Spirited away to the Northern gum fields, her captors always remained one step ahead of government and private search parties.

     By Guy Birchall, British journalist covering current affairs, politics and free speech issues. Recently published in The Sun and Spiked Online. With most of Europe imposing extraordinary restrictions to slow the spread of coronavirus, Sweden has left its citizens surprisingly free. Are Swedes rolling the dice with their public health, or is everyone else overreacting? As most of Europe clamps down in a bid to slow the spread of Covid-19, one country is bucking the trend. Sweden is taking a markedly more liberal approach to combatting the virus. Despite its closest neighbours, Denmark and Norway, shutting down all but essential services, Swedes remain free to socialise as the harsh Scandinavian winter comes to an end. Although universities and high schools have shut, pre-schools, kindergartens, bars, restaurants, ski resorts, sports clubs and hairdressers have all remained open. The streets of Stockholm and Malmo are noticeably quieter than usual, but positively bustling compared to those of Copenhagen, Oslo, London, Paris and Rome. Standing in bars is banned but as long as punters can find a seat they’re free to enjoy a night out. Other steps taken include gatherings of more than 50 people being banned and the over 70s being urged to self-isolate.

     The entire political focus of yesterday’s news cycle was the legislative imbroglio between Republicans and Democrats over the coronavirus rescue package. Republicans believe we should presuppose and even continue encouraging an indefinite shutdown while spending trillions to treat it. Democrats believe the same thing and also want to add all their other extraneous progressive policies too. But nobody is asking: Do we really need to intensify the shutdown before we understand the data and projections of the actual virus itself? Given that the virus was discovered in Wuhan on November 17 (at the latest), when did coronavirus really begin in this country? Roughly how many cases do we think occurred before we began testing during the first week in March, and how many fatalities occurred? How many of the presumed flu deaths, and particularly the presumed pneumonia deaths during what was thought of as a bad flu season, were really due to coronavirus? These are not mere academic questions. They should determine our public policy response. Knowing when the virus began and what we think occurred in January and February (and perhaps even December) will help determine not only how severe this virus is, but how far along we are into the epidemic. If we really had hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of cases, along with several thousand more fatalities prior to testing, that would mean that the mortality rate is even lower than the 1.2% post-testing average so far.

     We have been pointing out in our coverage of the coronavirus crisis, that there are still radically divergent points of view about this, among alternative sources who we have trusted in the past. Each side of the debate has marshalled studies and authorities which are far from unreasonable. Thus, we continue to strive to give balanced coverage. First, taking the coronapocalpyse line is Natural News.com, arguing that the coronavirus is much deadlier than the seasonal flu, and would have killed millions if not for lock down:
  https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-03-27-danger-coronavirus-10-times-more-deadly-than-influenza.html
  https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-03-27-coronavirus-would-have-killed-40-million-if-the-world-didnt-go-on-lockdown.html

“A new study points out that the outbreak could have caused 40 million deaths had it not been kept in check. The study comes from Imperial College London,  where researchers estimated the potential scale of the coronavirus pandemic across the globe had measures not been put in place to stop its spread. The paper appeared in the 12the report of the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Modeling within the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis and the Abdul Latif Jameel Institute for Disease and Emergency Analytics. “Our findings suggest that all countries face a choice between intensive and costly measures to suppress transmission or risk health systems becoming rapidly overwhelmed,” said the study’s co-author Dr. Patrick Walker, a member of the faculty of medicine at Imperial College London. “However, our results highlight that rapid, decisive and collective action now will save millions of lives in the next year,” Walker added. Currently, the latest estimates show that the coronavirus has infected over 531,000 people worldwide. However, according to the study, that number could have been as high as 7 billion people — about 90 percent of the world’s population — had it remained unchecked.”